The Hundred Days (22 page)

Stephen had the impression that the ibis was
extremely indignant at the egrets’ conduct: and indeed so late a migration,
well on in the month of May, was unusual, unwise, against all established
custom. Yet the beautiful white birds would not attend, and presently the ibis
left them with a final screech and hurried as fast as it could to the farther
group, which might, perhaps, listen to its advice.

Stephen never knew the outcome, for Jack led him to
the starboard bow - the ship was ghosting along under courses and a
forestaysail - and from here he beheld a vast expanse of gloriously blue sea
and a great convoy of merchantmen upon it, perhaps a hundred sail of ships,
British, Dutch, Scandinavian and American, gathered from Tripoli, Tunis and
further east, with the two corvettes and the sloop that Jack had sent to
protect them strung out to windward, while still farther off a practised eye
could make out some long, low-built corsairs waiting their opportunity.

‘That gives you some notion of the trade, don’t you
find?’ asked Jack. ‘Prodigious. But come over this side, and you will see another
sight.’ He held back the forestaysail and guided Stephen to the larboard
cathead, where they stood gazing across an even deeper blue expanse of sea to
the African shore. The Surprise had already opened the bay entirely and now the
sun was lighting first the mountains behind the town and on either side -
brilliant green after the spring rains - and then in a few moments the splendid
topmost buildings on the tall, symmetrically rounded hill upon which the city
was built. ‘That is the Kasbah, the Dey’s palace,’ said Jack.

Minute by minute the brilliant light moved down,
showing innumerable white flat-roofed houses built very close together;
towering minarets; occasional alleys, barely a single street; some blanks that
would probably be great squares if one could see them from above. Row after row of houses going down and down to the prodigious great
stone wall, the port, the huge mole and the inner harbour.

‘It is exceedingly impressive: there is a strange
beauty here,’ said Stephen. ‘I long to be better acquainted
with it.’

‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘And when we are a little closer
I shall ask Dr Jacob to go ashore, wait on the British consul to make sure that
if, in command of a King’s ship, I salute the castle, the salute will be
returned. And if the answer is yes, which is close on certain, whether he can
arrange for you to see the Dey as soon as possible.’

‘If you do not mind, brother, I had rather go
myself, with Dr Jacob to show me the way. I have a note that must be delivered
into the consul’s own hands. You will let me have Ringle, for greater
stateliness?’

‘Of course I shall: but in that case you may have
to wait for the land-breeze in the evening, to carry you out again. Algiers bay is almost always a
lee-shore.’

In spite of Jack’s words, it was the stately Ringle
that bore them in, on the understanding that her jolly-boat should pull out as
early as possible with the consul’s answer about the salute, Ringle waiting at
the mole for Stephen and a favourable wind.

Very fine she was as she stood in, came sweetly
against the mole and moored there to the admiration of all beholders: but there
the stateliness of the mission stopped. Dr Maturin had eluded the vigilance of
Killick, who supposed that the two doctors were gone aboard the schooner merely
to see their friends and who had taken no notice of his rusty old black coat,
his breeches unbuttoned at the knee or his crumpled neck-cloth, spotted with
blood from a recent shaving. Besides, Killick had had a most indifferent
morning. Presuming on his status as captain’s steward he had given Billy Green,
armourer’s mate, a shove as he went aft along the gangway, a shove that Green
had returned with such force that Killick plunged between the skid-beams to the
deck below, falling on two men at work there and scattering their tools; and
when Killick directed a reproof at Green, who replied ‘You and your God-damned
unicorn’s horn’, they set about him with jerks and cuffs and one threatened him
with a marlin-spike, calling him ‘abject reptile’ and desiring him to pipe down
and stop his gob for an unlucky, unlucky son of a rancid bitch. And although
the officer of the watch very soon put a stop to this unpleasantness, Killick
realized that the feeling of all those present was still very much against him.

He was grieved and angry; and he would have been
even more grieved and angrier by far if he had seen Dr Maturin walking along
the mole with Jacob and one of the Ringle’s boys, walking along in the
comfortable, shabby, down-at-heel shoes that had been taken from him but not hidden
well enough. He was a disreputable object, with his wig awry and blue
spectacles on his nose; and his companion was not much better either. Dr Jacob
was dressed in rather old clothes that might belong to the east or west of the Mediterranean - a grey caftan with many
cloth-covered buttons, a grey skull-cap, and grey heelless slippers.

‘It is indeed a most prodigious wall,’ said
Stephen.

‘Forty feet high,’ said Jacob. ‘I measured it
twice, long ago, with a string.’

They entered the town through a heavily-fortified
gate, and to Stephen’s surprise there were no formalities: the Turkish guards
looked at them curiously, but at Jacob’s brief statement that they were from
the English ship they nodded and stood aside. A few narrow streets, a small
square with an almond-tree, and the Ringle’s boy cried, ‘Oh sir, sir! There is
a camel!’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Jacob. ‘A she-camel,’ and he
led them round the creature, through yet another maze to a larger square: it
was the slave-market, he observed in a matter-of-fact tone, but there would be
neither merchants nor wares until later in the day: and the boy was to take
particular notice of all the turnings they took, since he would have to find
his way back alone. ‘Yes, sir,’ said the boy; but at almost the same moment, in
spite of Jacob’s assertion, they did see one weary old man, slowly carrying his
chain as he walked across the market to the fountain, and this so struck the
boy, who stared with all his might, even walking backwards to see more, that
Stephen resolved to ask the consul to let a servant show him the way back to
the mole. Another broad rectangle, and Jacob pointed
out the house where he had lived. ‘I shared it with a friend, the daughter of
the last descendant of a very ancient family of Grey Huns: but unhappily we
neither of us quite answered the other’s expectations. In the corner on the
left there is a shaded coffeehouse, where we might well be advised to drink a
cup, because our next stage is a climb of some five hundred steps almost to the
Kasbah itself. Shall we walk in?’

They walked in, and after civil greetings Jacob and
Stephen were given leather cushions by the side of a table nine inches high,
near the front of the well-filled shop (which also sold hashish and tobacco),
while the delighted boy sat on the ground. ‘Perhaps the young man would prefer
sherbet?’ suggested Jacob. ‘Oh yes, sir, if you please,’ said the young man,
and he drank with ecstasy, gazing at a whole train of camels that passed slowly
by, laden with dates, pliable baskets crammed with dates and covered with
palm-leaves.

People were now passing in greater numbers: mostly
Moors, but many black Africans, and some that Jacob pointed out as Jews of
different kinds, Greeks and Lebanese. But when, having finished their second
cups of coffee and another bowl of sherbet, they declined the proffered hookah
and began their climb, they did not find the path at
all crowded.

‘Is this a Muslim holy day, or a fast, that so many
people stay at home?’ asked Stephen. ‘I had always thought of Algiers as a teeming,
densely-populated town.’

‘So it is, at ordinary times,’ replied Jacob. ‘I
think that all who can have moved into the country or the surrounding villages.
I heard the men sitting behind us speak of an English bombardment as very
probable indeed; and the emptiness of the markets is something I have never
known before, even in times of plague.’ He was already gasping when he said
this, and a few steps further on he pointed to a recess and said, ‘This is
where I usually sit when I am going to the Kasbah.’

They all rested on the stone bench, worn smooth
with innumerable weary hams, and presently the boy cried, ‘Oh sir! Do you see
them enormous great huge birds?’

‘Certainly,’ said Stephen. ‘They are vultures, you
know, the ordinary fulvous...’ He stopped short, not wishing to disappoint, and
added, ‘But they are very splendid on the wing. See how they turn!’

‘I have seen a vulture, said the boy, more or less
to himself, with infinite satisfaction.

Another two hundred steps and Jacob turned off
righthanded. ‘There is the consulate,’ he said, pointing to a considerable
house with a garden full of date-palms. ‘Should you like to draw breath again
before going in?’

Stephen felt in his pocket for the ministerial
letter, heard the reassuring crackle, and said, ‘Never in life: let us not lose
a minute. Boy, will you wait here, sitting in the shade of a palm-tree?’

He and Jacob walked through the side-door obviously
intended for business, and in the office they found a young man sitting with
his feet on the desk. ‘Who the Devil are you?’ he asked. ‘And what do you want?
Distressed British subjects, I suppose.’

‘My name is Maturin, Dr Stephen Maturin,
surgeon in HMS Surprise, and I wish to see the consul, for whom I have a letter
and a verbal message.’

‘You can’t see the consul. He is sick. Give me the
letter and tell me the message,’ said the young man; but he did not take his
feet off the desk.

‘The letter is from the Ministry and can be
delivered only into the consul’s own hands. The message is equally private. If
you wish you may show him my card: and he will decide whether to receive me or
not.’ He brought out a card, pencilled some words on the back, and laid it on
the desk. The young man changed colour and said, ‘I will speak to her
ladyship.’

‘Dr Maturin,’ she cried, running in - a remarkably
handsome woman of thirty-five or so. ‘You will not remember me, but we met in
Sierra Leone, when Peter was on poor Governor Wood’s staff - we dined on
opposite sides of the table - of course you shall see him - you will not mind
his being in bed, I am sure - it is the hip-gout and he suffers most
cruelly...’ Her eyes filled with tears.

‘Dear Lady Clifford, I remember you perfectly. You
wore a pearl-grey dress and as Mrs Wood observed it became you wonderfully. May
I present my colleague, Dr Jacob? He has more experience than I of sciatica and
related diseases and he may have seen similar cases.’

‘How do you do, sir?’ said Lady Clifford, and she
led them upstairs to a sadly tumbled bedroom.

‘Dr Maturin, I do apologize for receiving you like
this,’ said the consul, ‘but I dare not get up: the fit has just died away, and
I fairly dread waking it...’ He gave Jacob a civil but enquiring look. Stephen
explained his presence and the Ministry’s total confidence in him; he then
passed the letter he was carrying. Sir Peter smiled kindly at Jacob, said,
‘Forgive me,’ to Stephen, and broke the seal. ‘Yes,’ he said, putting the
letter by, ‘it is perfectly clear. But, my dear sir, I believe you have come to
a totally new situation. Have you had news from Algiers since the beginning of
April?’

Stephen cast his mind back and after a moment’s
thought said, ‘We have not. Between this and Durazzo we touched only at
Pantellaria, where they had nothing to tell us, good or bad, only that no
houario had passed or touched there - that no houario could have survived the
furious wind that struck us. Nor did we speak any ship, though Commodore Aubrey
may even now be conferring with some one of the captains he sent to convoy the
eastern trade... and, sir, before going any further may I carry out one part of
my duties? The Commodore desired me to ask you whether, if he were to stand in,
perhaps with part of his squadron, and salute the castle, whether the salute
would be returned?’

‘Oh Lord, yes: no sort of doubt about it, after the
way he has been playing Old Harry in the Adriatic.’

‘Then may I beg you to lend me a servant to show
our ship’s boy down to the mole? He is to carry the message to the Commodore,
but this is the first time he has ever left Stow on the Wold - he sees wonders
on every hand, and I fear he may utterly lose his way.’

‘Certainly. I shall send one of my
guards, a discreet greybearded Turk,’ said the consul. He rang, and when the
guard answered he bade him take the boy down to the mole with the note The salute will be answered which Stephen wrote on a piece
of paper.

‘Oh, good Lord,’ said the consul, carefully lying
back on his pillows, ‘we have heard such tales here of Frenchmen joining you,
of Frenchmen being sunk - Algerines shockingly battered - shipyards going up in
flames by the score - the only corsairs at sea are those from very far east:
all ours are penned up in the inner harbour. But to go back to the matter in
hand: if you have had no recent news from here you cannot know that the
situation is wholly changed and that my influence with the Dey no longer
exists. He was strangled by the janissaries, and some days later they elected
their current Agha, Omar Pasha, as the new Dey. I hardly know him. His mother
was a Turk, and he speaks Turkish and Arabic with equal fluency and some Greek
- illiterate in all three, but by reputation a man of very strong character and
intelligent: and indeed he would not have been chosen otherwise.’

‘What you tell me is very disturbing. Pray, have
you any news of the Allies’ progress?’

‘As I understand it, the Russians and Austrians are
still muddling very slowly along, still separated by great stretches of
mountain, river and bog: and by strong mutual distrust.’

‘Do you think, sir, that a meeting with the new Dey
could be arranged as soon as possible? Perhaps tomorrow?’